China News Service, Beijing, September 17 (Zheng Shigui, Fan Jingyan) Since the safe operation of the Chinese space station in orbit, it has withstood the test of the harsh space environment and ensured the life safety of astronauts in orbit. These are inseparable from the overall The Space Debris Protection Design Team of the Design Department has built the "impenetrable protective armor" for the Chinese Space Station, which provides powerful space debris protection capabilities for the long-term safe operation of the space station in orbit.

Behind this is the team's 20 years of technical accumulation.

Formation of a space debris protection design team

　　The universe is infinite, but space orbit resources are not infinite.

Experts pointed out that the most valuable earth orbit is mainly concentrated in the orbit area below 2,000 kilometers, which has also become a "distribution center" for space debris.

Space debris is seen as a global problem.

In 1993, the world's major space-faring countries initiated the establishment of the "Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC)", and the "space debris issue" officially entered the research field of the world's space industry.

　　Since 2002, experts such as Qu Guangji, Yang Lei, Yan Jun and other experts from the general design department of the Fifth Academy of Aerospace Science and Technology Group realized the importance of the field of "space debris" to the future manned spaceflight, and began to form a space debris team, gradually forming a Researcher Yan Jun is a technical team led by leaders and technical backbones of old, middle-aged and young people, and has fully started the process of technical reserve in the field of space debris.

　　At that time, there were only a few people in China who had the concept of space debris protection, and there were only a handful of relevant technical materials. With the underdeveloped network technology, various library and information departments became the most frequented places for team members.

In the weekly technical discussion meeting, everyone exchanged the latest information, insights and confusion, and spoke freely.

　　In just a few years, the research team has successfully completed a series of related research projects, breaking through many key technologies such as mathematical modeling, programming language development, programming algorithm deduction, etc., and successfully developed the "Space Debris Risk Assessment and Protection Design Software (MODAOST). )", the software has reached the advanced level of similar software in the world, and the relevant achievements have been recognized by international counterparts.

Tiangong-1 realizes engineering application of space debris protection technology for the first time

　　In 2005, when the first prototype of Tiangong-1 was designed, the technical team reported on the hazards and countermeasures of space debris many times. Undertake all the work of Tiangong-1 space debris assessment and protection design.

　　Facing the first engineering application of space debris protection technology, the technical team has consulted and communicated with the general designer, structural designer and thermal control designer many times to gain an in-depth understanding of the overall requirements and sub-system design.

　　In order to reduce the weight increase as much as possible, the team put forward the idea of ​​using the radiator to play part of the protective function through a large number of tests, making full use of the original radiator outside the cabin as a protective plate, and only increasing the weight of the support column to improve the cabin's protective ability More than 3 times, and by changing the radiator pipeline to a built-in design, the single-point failure probability of the radiator pipeline is significantly reduced.

The protective design of Tiangong-1 is a work that perfectly combines the concept of ultra-high-speed impact protection with the principles of simplicity, economy, and reliability in engineering.

　　On September 29, 2011, Tiangong-1 was successfully launched. As my country's first spacecraft designed for space debris protection, it has withstood the test of the space debris environment during four and a half years in orbit. my country's space debris protection technology has made a major breakthrough. .

The space station will be protected for a longer time

　　When the practice of Tiangong-1 protection project was coming to an end, the team began to focus on the third phase of the manned project. In view of the longer on-orbit time, larger assembly scale, and more stringent protection requirements of the space station, a new protection design for the space station was fully launched. process.

　　With the aim of independent, controllable and sustainable development, the team put forward the research and development principle of "based on domestic materials and benchmarked against international standards", and decided to independently develop composite material filled protective structures with more advanced performance.

　　Faced with this goal, the first pass must first overcome the material problem.

The team proposed the "impact pressure-based protective material evaluation method", which can quantitatively evaluate the protective performance of materials, and simply and effectively screen out two materials with protective potential from dozens of composite materials in China; the team has passed hundreds of composite materials. Numerical simulation calculation and experiment were carried out, and the law of influence of parameters such as weight and position of composite material on protective performance was mastered.

Later, designers can easily design protective structures with optimal performance according to their needs.

　　At present, advanced protective structures have been successfully applied to the protection of space station Tianhe core cabin, Wentian experimental cabin, and Mengtian experimental cabin. The performance indicators of my country's space station protective structure have reached the international advanced level.

With the completion of the construction of my country's space station step by step and its long-term operation in orbit, the space debris protection team will build an unbreakable protective fortress for the space station to provide strong protection for the lives of astronauts.

(Finish)